Husband and I were ND State employees for 37 years. As such, we were actively discouraged, almost prohibited, by our bosses from putting political signs in our yard.
This was the case no matter what party was in control of the State government. There apparently was great concern that State employees had to appear as neutral as possible and not be viewed as trying to influence elections.
I suppose in more populous areas inthe country people wouldn’t necessarily know if you were a State employee . In ND, where everyone knows everyone and where they work, nothing was anonymous.
This will be the first year in decades we will be able to put political signs in our yard. Husband is going to the county DFL meeting tomorrow night and I hope he brings some signs home. It is pretty exciting!
Do you put political signs in your yard? Ever run into problems with them or had them vandalized?
Since my retirement in October I have been increasingly addicted to online games. Most are from the New York Times. I play them on my phone.
I play Wordle, Strands, Connections, and Spelling Bee. The other games on the NY Times are a little frustrating and I don’t care much for them. I like word puzzles better than visual puzzles.
Wouldn’t you know that the New Yorker, to which I also subscribe, has a crossword puzzle in every magazine, as well as other word puzzles online. Husband has become addicted to those, and we played the online ones every day.
Grandson loves word puzzles, and I plan to play them with him when he is here this week. He always asks me to play puzzles.
Our grandson is spending a few days with us this week while his daycare is closed. We plan to take him swimming and to the local library. I also plan to bake with him and we will make Franzbrotchen, a Hamburg pastry. I want him to learn about where his ancestors came from. He loves to bake and cook and is an excellent sous chef. We will have Pasta Carbonara, one of his favorites. We also will enlist his help with some gardening. He loves to grow things. We are Oma and Opa, to distinguish us from his Grandma and Grandpa on his mom’s side of the family.
I spent time with both sets of grandparents in the summer. My father’s parents lived on a farm outside of Magnolia, MN. That grandma was a great lover of cats and had a regiment of them. She loved to feed them buttered sweetcorn cobs after we were done eating the corn kernals. I would help her collect eggs and work in the garden. The hens pecking at my arms as I took their eggs were scary. I liked talking to the cows and pigs. My grandfather was partially paralyzed from a stroke. He had a wonderful library of history books, and we would talk about his recent read and the history discussed in the book. He really liked talking about Napoleon, someone who had such an impact on his family in northwest Germany.
My maternal grandparents lived on a farm close to Hatfield, MN, a small town with a notorious dance hall, near Pipestone. That grandma (who we called Omie) and I would bake sweet rolls and cook wonderful suppers together. She was a great story teller and related lots of reminiscences from her childhood in Hamburg, Germany and her teen years in New York City. Grandpa was a really quiet guy who kept busy helping my uncle on the farm. His English was somewhat limited and we didn’t talk all that much. He was kindly and gentle.
I hope our grandson has positive memories of his time with us. We have books, a garden, fancy food, terriers, cats, a library, and a really nice swimming pool. What more does a kid need?
Who were your most memorable older relatives? What did you learn from them?
Boommate and I hoped to go to a matinee at our local movie theatre tomorrow see The Odyssey. Our theatre, the Palace, is a 100+ year old former Vaudeville theatre that the community has restored and renovated for our local theatre group productions, movies, and concerts. The Missoula Children’s Theatre was scheduled for a workshop and a production as well. Tuesday we got the word that everything was cancelled. During the recent Green Earth Players production of On Golden Pond a bat was noticed soaring around the very tall ceiling. It apparently brought quite a few friends along, too. The bat mitigation company can’t come until next week. The Missoula Children’s Theatre has been moved to the Catholic church.
I am pretty sure the Palace was first movie theatre I went to as a child. Boommate and I took a trip to Sioux Falls on Tuesday to run some errands. Our travels took us to downtown Sioux Falls where we noticed the State Theatre, where we both remembered seeing The Sound Of Music when it first came out. It was the only theatre that had a big enough screen and modern sound system to accommodate the movie. My dad took me and it was memorable. I was about 7 years old.
Our 8 year old grandson is coming to stay with us for a few days next week and I hope the bats get removed before he arrives. The Palace always has children’s movies during the week and I would love to take him. I really want him to experience the Palace.
What was the first movie theatre you remember going to? Any bat or rodent stories?
Ever since Luverne was included as one of the four US communities featured in Ken Burns’ The War, townsfolk have been intent on highlighting veterans and their stories.
It was with great excitement that we heard about the heroism of yet another local veteran. Writer Nina Willner recently published a book called The Boys In The Light, the story of how her teenaged father and a teenaged companion were saved by a Luverne local after they had escaped from a Nazi death camp.
Elmer Hovland was a 23 year old Luverne native and a commander of a tank unit. They were rolling through northern Germany in 1944 with instructions to stop for nothing and no one, when Elmer spotted the two emaciated teens along the side of the road. Despite orders, Elmer immediately stopped the tanks and picked them up and took them along. He discovered that Nina Willner’s dad, Eddie, spoke English as well as German. He convinced his superiors that Eddie would make a great translator, and he was put to work doing just that. Both Elmer and Eddie survived the war. Elmer returned to his immigrant Norwegian parents’ farm near Luverne. He became a carpenter. Eddie eventually immigrated to the US and built a successful life.
The two men didn’t meet again until decades later. Nina Willner attributed Elmer’s actions to his Norwegian heritage and the values that were important to people from Luverne. I vaguely remember Elmer since he attended the same Lutheran church as I did. He died in 2012 at the age of 90. Very few people in Luverne knew anything about this story until the book was published late last year. It is next on my reading list.
Any notable people from your town? Any books written about your community or residents?
Now that we are retired and are getting to know more people, Husband and I are participating in groups for coffee. We never had the time or inclination in ND.
Every Sunday after church a group of about 16 meets in the basement for coffee and cookies. Husband and I are the youngest participants. The women sit at one table and the men at another, and the men have to make sure all the coffee pots are filled. Conversation is brisk and somewhat gossipy.
On Wednesday morning Husband goes to a men’s bible study where they drink coffee, and then afterwards many of them go out for coffee at a local coffee shop for more secular conversation.
Husband now attends exercise class with me. The other men who attend the class invite him for coffee after class. He has yet to go but is touched by the offers. I had forgotten how much men here like to get together to talk and drink coffee. My father ran a coffee shop here for many years and it was always full of guys talking and drinking coffee. After he retired he met every day with a group of fellow WWII veterans at a local snack bar for coffee and treats. They were officially known as The Last Man’s Club. They even had by-laws written up. Governor Pawlenty’s wife came to Luverne to meet with them.
I have been more of a homebody than Husband, so my coffee klatsch participation is more limited. Maybe after my 50th reunion in September I will find local former classmates to meet up with.
Got coffee buddies? Any unwritten rules for participation? Where do you like to meet?
Today Husband and I are going to the local travel agent to have her make airplane reservations for a late September trip to Denver. Husband’s siblings decided that we all needed to get together in Denver for their stepmother’s 90th birthday. It is a straight flight from Sioux Falls to Denver with no layovers. The travel agent is a high school classmate of mine.
I am the person in our family who goes on-line and makes all the reservations, books hotels, plans things, makes arrangements, etc. I look forward to the Denver gathering, but I found myself strangely reluctant to make the plane reservations, and I put it off all week. On Friday I finally forced myself to go to the United website to book the flights and found it impossible to navigate. I told Husband that we were going through the travel agent instead. I felt immediate relief. Husband agreed. He doesn’t want the stress, either.
It dawned on me that I am tired of being brave. I have been a “do it myself” sort of person all my life, and I think I am done. I don’t want the anxiety that goes with independently spending large amounts of money on difficult to navigate websites. I spent almost 40 years dealing with other people’s crises in my professional work, managing suicidal and homicidal people, testifying in court as an expert witness, managing our move here, and generally dealing with and solving problems and finding solutions. I finally convinced myself that it is ok to let other people do the work. I am embracing my inner coward and relaxing!
Is it easy or hard for you to accept help from others? When have you had to be brave?
Daughter recently purchased a condo, and she has been busy nesting and settling in. We still have quite a bit of her stuff, including a collection of Russian nesting dolls and her baby china. I hope we can get it to her in Tacoma and get it out of our basement.
We have her French Horn in our basement as well. It is a lovely Conn French Horn we got for her in Middle School. She was a really good French Horn player, and even made it into Junior High All-State Band. Then disaster hit and she needed braces on her teeth. She never could play all that well again, but she played all through High School.
I asked her the other day if I could donate her horn to the local high school. It is truly a lovely instrument, and would be greatly appreciated. She surprised me by saying she wants to start playing it again. She said many of her middle school therapy clients talk about their band and orchestra experiences and she realized how much she missed playing her horn.
The horn hasn’t been touched for more than 12 years. Husband and I took it to a music store in Sioux Falls on Tuesday and upon examination they said it was in great shape. The valves all worked and everything was movable. They are going to clean it all up, though, and lubricate it. We will ship it to her after that. Now that she hasn’t braces on her teeth, perhaps she really will play again. I also hope this means she will start playing her violin again.
Did you have braces? Did you play in band or orchestra in school? If you have kids, still have their stuff in your home?
When we lived in ND we could always count on this guy from Mott, ND, just south of us, to bring fresh Washington and Montana fruit to town. He picked the fruit himself, and the peaches in particular were always wonderful.
I have yet to see Washington peaches in the stores here, only California peaches which I never like very much. They never seem very juicy. Ditto for Georgia peaches.
Boommate is a connoisseur of Colorado peaches. They are now just starting to show up in stores and fruit trucks. She is so fussy, though, that she will only eat Colorado peaches from the Palisades area of the state, preferably grown by Talbott farms. A fruit truck came to town last week selling Colorado peaches but she couldn’t tell what part of Colorado they came from. We were lucky to find some in Sioux Falls yesterday and now they are ripening in paper bags. Boommate insists that I must make at least one crumble with them.
I have made a couple of crumbles this summer, one with nectarines and one with peaches. I have some more nectarines almost ripe enough to bake, and I plan to make them into a crumble with some sweet cherries. My crumbles are pretty simple. I just put about 6 cups of sliced fruit into a buttered 9 × 12 baking dish, mix up 2 c of white flour, 2 c of firmly packed light brown sugar, 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t nutmeg, and a cup of butter in the food processor until it is crumbly, sprinkle it on top of the fruit, and bake at 375° for 30-40 minutes until it is nicely browned and the fruit is bubbling thickly.
Crumbles are my go to desserts in the summer. I don’t have the patience to can peaches or make jam from them. We bought two more bags of brown sugar yesterday so we are well provisioned for a few more crumbles this month.
What foods are you the most fussy about? Where do you like to buy your seasonal produce? Do you care where your peaches are from?
The last time I was at the MN State Fair was 43 years ago on our honeymoon. It has been even more years since I attended the Rock County Fair. It was always an exciting time, and it got even more fun after I joined 4-H. I did horticulture and sewing projects. When I was in Grade 8 I got Grand Champion on my terrarium project, and that led to my first trip to the State Fair.
Last week Husband, Boommate, and I went to the Rock County Fair. It is held in Luverne. Boommate hadn’t been there for many years as well, and neither of us recognized the fairgrounds with all the new construction and exhibit buildings. There was the same collection of carnival rides and food booths. The Rock County Pork Producers had a stand selling great bacon wrapped pork tenderloin. Like the State Fair, we also have a machinery hill, but on a smaller scale.
I remember my cousins showing their Chester White pigs at the fair, dousing them with baby powder to make them pretty. It was fun to be in the animal barns and see all the livestock up close.
We also toured all the 4-H and open class exhibit building to see all the prize pickles, garden produce, tallest field corn, photography, and 4-H educational projects.
Husband spent more time at the fair than I did since he helped the county DFL group set up their stand in one of the commercial buildings and hand out brochures. . My paternal grandfather was one of the founding members of the Rock County DFL party, and I am tickled Husband is getting involved with them.
Our fair isn’t all pigs and canning. The following photos show what else went on. I thought the cannon display was interesting.
I don’t think we will make it to the State Fair this fall, but the County Fair was a delight and I am really glad we went.
What are your early fair experiences? Were you in 4 -H or similar organizations? Ever been to a tractor pull?
Trail Baboon 